If they pushed software updates, a large portion of the IT infrastructure on the planet would grind to a halt, and if they called themselves CrowdStrike, they'd offer $10 UberEats gift certificates.

The CrowdStrike outage began on July 19, when Windows machines around the world crashed and fell into an endless bootloop. This was caused by a CrowdStrike software update that could only be repaired by manually deleting certain files from individual machines. Needless to say, this cleanup was a major undertaking.

Sources told TechCrunch that they received an email from CrowdStrike “recognizing the additional work that the July 19 incident had caused” and offering a coupon.

One post on X stated that the voucher was worth £7.75 (about $10). Good grief.

A $10 gift card is the furthest thing from an apology, given that the massive blackout caused by CrowdStrike is estimated to have caused billions of dollars in damage. It also reeks of a terrible workplace where bosses offer employees a slice of pizza “as a reward for a job well done” instead of a bonus or overtime pay. The fact that some of these gift cards were unusable only adds insult to injury.

You might be thinking that this is the work of opportunistic scammers trying to take advantage of the situation with the promise of gift cards. However, CrowdStrike admitted to TechCrunch that it was the company that sent the gift cards; Uber flagged it as a scam because of its high usage rate.

In the aftermath of CrowdStrike's massive outage last week, many questions need to be answered and the CEO has been called to testify before the House Homeland Security Committee. Meanwhile, Microsoft is blaming the EU for the disaster because of legal restrictions that prevent it from walling off the Windows operating system in the same way Apple does. This means that security software experts will have the same level of access to Windows as Microsoft.

The cloud strike is not the only one in question. Delta is facing a federal investigation over the outage, which has caused 478 flight cancellations and 1,440 flight delays. This number is reportedly higher than any other airline.

In other words, even if the damage itself appears to be mostly contained, this story is not going anywhere anytime soon, and one can only hope that CrowdStrike does not continue to make matters worse with token gestures.